


The Grand Gesture

by cicak



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Raffles is incorrigible and Bunny steals a heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grand Gesture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJs Bunny (agentj)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentj/gifts).



I have always given the impression in the published annals of Raffles and my adventures that Raffles was my master in the ways of crime, a wonderful villain I was nevertheless glad to follow as apprentice, acolyte, friend and Hamlinese piper to my lovelorn rabbit-rat. I have hinted at some of the unspeakably terrible things he had done and explicitly declared a few of the more acceptable adventures to be wonderful romps of danger and glamour. However, I have neglected to highlight my own moments of delicious villainy, few and far between though they were. This action is that of a coward. There have been many years between these events and now, and I cheapen Raffles’ memory as well as my own by omitting them from the record. I was his apprentice, after all, and so it came together that eventually he should rub off on me in the most fiendish of ways.

This story begins, as many of our adventures did, with Raffles coming upon me unannounced after he had had a long day of it. By this point in our partnership he had a key to my rooms, but he still liked to knock if he suspected I was in. I, at the time, was engaged in writing a particularly obstinate article for my editor, as Raffles had encouraged me to take up the pen to wield an alibi as mighty as the sword for myself, a solution loosely akin to his cricketing. My editor, kindly man as he was, gave interesting cheques for intriguing articles, and I had been pondering the various strangled clauses of the subjunctive and considering abusing the French press once more despite the hour before Raffles near bought down my door with his furious rapping.  
“Bunny, my man!” he said, dressed impeccably in what looked to be a new silk top hat and tails. “What are you doing still lounging about at this time of night? I have come to roust you out old boy; it has been far too long since we took supper at the club. I ran into Adelbert earlier and he said they have the most exquisite Armagnac that someone bought back from Medoc just waiting for someone possessing of decent taste to imbibe it. Since I have been visiting our mutual friend and have collected our wages of sin for the last month, I think we owe it to ourselves to indulge a little this evening before the gentlemen from the city arrive and steal it from us.”  
To someone not used to Raffles’ queer manner of speech, the declaration of having ‘met our mutual friend’ coupled with his changing into evening dress meant that I was his second call after the Albany and the underworld operative he used as his fence. As well-dressed a gentleman my friend is, every day is a costume piece to him and he would never deign to meet a shady underworld character in anything less than his best scruff. It would be as unfathomable to him as turning up to the Royal Café in his cricket whites.  

As it was a fine night I put up only a token protest to my being dragged out. I shrugged as quickly as possibly into my second-finest collars and cuffs, my best having been ruined on the adventure the week before as I made a swift exit down a wall I had not realised was decorated with very ornate but also very sharp trelliswork. I had been looking forward to buying myself a new set with the spoils of that jaunt, writing them off so to speak against the expenses account of the cracksman. A jolly fine meal would be appreciated however, and my wardrobe could wait for the next innings.

I presented myself to Raffles’ appraising eye in the sitting room and, obviously passing muster, we linked arms and strode across the lukewarm springtime London towards the promise of a good meal and exceptional drink.

Raffles was in a rare mirthful mood that evening as we sat down to dinner. I had wondered idly as to what we were to discuss, but he took great pleasure in telling me slowly and thoroughly of his day, which had been a lot more exciting than mine. Raffles is a storyteller without compare, and his tale of derring-do involved the illegitimate and secretly illiterate daughter of a merchant banker, four detailed outfit changes, a erratic crossing of the Thames in three separate hansoms (with descriptions of the characters who drove them), seventeen shillings and four pence in bribes to some sufficiently corrupt banking clerks and endless other likely falsified underhand pawn movements in his grand game of chess, which somehow culminated in a glass of scotch and a well placed Palomino. This story lasted the entirety of our meal and left me with a throat raw from laughing in all the right places until finally, over the promised Armagnac, Raffles reached the climax of this very involved and embellished tale and placed before me a slim box, perfectly wrapped in smart black paper and tied with a bow.

I cocked my eyebrow, something Raffles cannot do and the one sardonic habit he begrudges me.  “Oh Raffles, you shouldn’t have! It is not my birthday for another month” I said dryly.

Raffles huffed a breath that I took as a laugh. “Bunny, you act as if the date is not a significant one! Have you been so buried in your honest work that you have not managed to see a paper today? It has been a year since we sanctified our little partnership with the visit to the jewellers, and I would say that our first year has been very profitable, wouldn’t you?  Of course, it would probably be more fitting for me to give you something made of cotton, and I did in fact make a discreet enquiry at your shirt makers’ after the little problem with the trellis last week, but in the end I decided that a year in our line of work is as good as fifty in the loyalty stakes. So, my dear rabbit, bonne anniversaire, as they say.”

I made to open the box, the thick satin ribbon coiling off the edge of the table as I slid my cheese knife against the seam of the paper underneath. I meant to keep my composure, but I couldn’t help a swift intake of breath (that I would argue vehemently was not a gasp) when the light caught the beautiful bauble inside. Glinting in the candlelight was a single gold pen, the type given for a lifetime’s long service to industry.  I lifted it and it was utterly perfect; from the distribution of weight to the quality and clarity of the gold it was a singular specimen of its kind. I turned it and my brow furrowed as I realised that what was etched into the nameplate was not my name or sobriquet, but a pair of rabbit’s ears.

I must have appeared rapt with joy before I looked up to find Raffles no longer sitting opposite me. He had moved behind me and his hands brushed the line of my shoulders as I felt him bring his face down so as to murmur into my ear “To remember me by, dear rabbit, should you ever see fit to come to your senses”. His voice was deep as the hallowed depths, lips catching on the sharp edges of the consonants and tinged with regret and a challenge all the same. It was difficult to place the final note, before realising that it was a tone I had never heard from him. I took it to be resignation, acceptance, the inevitability of my forsaking him. Now, you might think that I read too much into Raffles’ voice, but it is like fine blended whisky to me, or perhaps a singular French perfume. There are layers to be found, if you know where to look, how to taste them correctly, appearing and disappearing as soon as another comes to take their place. I only had a moment to react before he was gone as soon as that, striding over to greet an MCC member with the familiarity of an old friend, the charming cadence of the pride of England ringing out through the room.

I can admit that Raffles probably did not mean to cause offence with his declaration, but nevertheless I was fuming for much of the next day. I sat in my room unable to finish my article, and caught in an endless cycle in my head.  The mere presence of the pen lying on my writing desk accused me of lacking the one thing I always thought Raffles took for granted. I have always been too loyal to him, and been so for a long period of my life, even before I took the leap and pinned my existence upon him. When I was in my darkest hour it was Raffles that I thought of, with whom I was evangelical about and then how like Raffles to congratulate me on my fealty with one grand gesture and then doubt it in the next breath! How could he not have noticed that I make great study of him, that if there was a chair of the study of A. J. Raffles I would be undisputed in being appointed it. How could he treat me so carefully and then turn around and act like I was no better than the society sycophants who coo over him at parties, or the men who love him when he takes five-for but then belittle him when he doesn’t?

As I dislike running headfirst when so hot of head, I resolved to ignore Raffles for a while until I calmed down. I knew him to be callous: his actions in the adventure I blithely titled ‘Out of Paradise’ were around the same time and followed a similar pattern and so I knew he would eventually realise that he had wounded me. I enjoyed wallowing in my pity for all the comfort it gave me though, as I am a melodramatic soul when it all comes down to it. I furiously imagined Raffles coming to see me to apologise for his wounding words. I weaved great fantasies of the angry and cutting remarks I would say to cut him in retaliation, my arguments tight as a Liner’s hull and steady as its ballast despite my quaking, leporine heart.

Of all the plans I nursed in my rooms, it was fate that threw the better option in my direction, as fate is often wont to do. I received an invitation in the afternoon post to attend a party at my friend Samuel Bull’s family home in Esher. Bull had been a chum in the final years of school after Raffles had left and I had attempted to find my own feet in his absence, and subsequently he was a peer rather than idol. In my indolent, squandering years after finishing school and coming into my inheritance Bull had been my companion as we wasted our respective fortunes on frivolities and chasing good times. I had finally found something to excel at in spending my inheritance on slow horses and doomed dice, but last I heard Bull had fallen on his luck and had got engaged to the daughter of the late Duke of Leipzig whilst on a jaunt there to buy more of the terrible German art that had been his personal weakness. The party, I read, was in honour of his new bride and her mother the Duchess to introduce them to the fineries of English society, or as close as you can get in Surrey.

I used my Judas-pen to scrawl a reply confirming my attendance, feeling confident that by the time it came around I would have a solid plan in place to use the event to exact my revenge upon Raffles.

I told Raffles of my intention to go to Esher for the weekend over drinks the following week. We were enjoying some fine cigars and I was hypnotised by the elegant line of Raffles’ neck as he put the groundwork into blowing rings. My declaration was met first with a pause, and then with a swift dismissal. “Enjoy yourself, old boy. I was planning on asking your companionship to dinner at the long room, as I am compelled to play the part of the dutiful MCC member and gentleman player to herald the start of the season. I know you find those dinners tedious, so no matter”.  
I was already annoyed with him so I didn’t bother to look vexed that he had forgotten that I rather liked those MCC dinners far more than he did, as an actual follower of the game rather than gifted, but dismissive, player of it.  
He cracked an eyelid and peeked at me. “I’ll see you next week though, eh Bunny? I think I might have found a satisfactory event to round off our season.”  
With that, he blew a perfect ring. I applauded, despite myself. Raffles smiled at me. “It's all in the tongue, my good man.”

The party was alien to me after so long out of the circuit. There was a time when the youngest Manders was, whilst not the life and soul of the party, certainly a fixture. I have attended my fair share of balls and know how to compose myself at them. While I have never been one to be comfortable in the foreground, my year in Raffles’ charismatic orbit had left me even more out of practice at small talk. As a result, I stuck close to old Bullo and we rotated clockwise round the party. I felt myself reawaken from under the fog of my new life and persona as at each new cluster of society people Bull introduced me as Harry, rather than as Bunny. I was shocked enough the first time my name passed his lips that I gave a little jolt. I hadn’t realised how disassociated from my name I had become in these kind of situations. It had been so long since I had been introduced to someone properly by someone other than Raffles, who always exclusively refers to me by his pet name for me even in improper circumstances. I can become entirely used to it, and I bade to hide my smile in a sip of champagne as I felt the thrill of it slip down my spine. I fear the Surrey gentry must have thought me a grinning idiot by the time Bull had introduced me to all the most pertinent people present before murmuring his excuses and dashing off to deal with a pressing matter.

I feel I should point out at this point that I did not attend this party with the intention of committing a crime. I desired to see my old friend, someone I had not seen since I became a secret member of the criminal classes, and to wish him sincere luck on his impending nuptials, and I desired to forget Raffles for a while. By this point I had spent weeks trying to formulate a plan that would leave me triumphant and Raffles cowing, but despite resorting to drawing graphs and plans worthy of a land war in Asia I had not managed to deduce a way to affect my victory using this party as the catalyst. I felt impotent at trying to rid myself of this controlling anxiety that had yet to come to a head and so I had decided the best thing to do was to give up and enjoy myself for a weekend. It promised to be a good evening with people who at least would not only look at me so as to see Raffles better. I had therefore not considered cracking the crib of my good friend. It would have been a terrible breach of manners.

I felt curiously liberated to be out in society without Raffles! Although in my stories I give the impression that I was Raffles’ shadow and we practically lived in each other’s pockets throughout the years of our partnership, it was not anywhere near as so. Though we did only socialise mostly when he needed me, our affair was still mainly one of the dark winter months when he wasn’t engaged by the MCC. There were times when he would come and visit me, but for the most part I went to him when he called me up or when I had created a flimsy excuse to call on him at the Albany. I managed to fill the rest of my time with the company of others. The few friends and acquaintances I had left after my near-disgrace were solid enough chaps, but meeting new people was difficult as I had stopped my gambling and socialising habits dead, both being as draining on the bank account as each other when done to excess. I do fear however that I bored my friends by only speaking of Raffles, of his averages and test triumphs and his triumphant person, and most likely came across as giddily obsessed as a newly betrothed girl.

After a few more glasses of excellent champagne, I came round to the main act, so to speak. Bullo’s blushing bride-to-be was fine enough: a wispy German fräulein with enormous blue eyes, perfect charms and terrible English. She had a fine circlet of pearls upon her dewy décolletage and Bullo’s mother’s ring upon her finger. I remember the night he had considered selling it so as to buy the Zoffany he had been offered by his dealer that was going for a song, and how I had convinced him that he should not sell it to buy something so busy and instead wait for something more befitting his dear mother’s memory. The Zoffany now hangs in a fine public collection, and Bull was marrying money and respectability with the ring instead. He told me later that he took his wife to see it, and was sure he had made the right choice. The ring was the definition of late Georgian taste, and was far too loose upon her finger, as if she could not yet be parted with it long enough to have it adjusted to her size.

I was then introduced to her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Upper Saxony. She was a woman as large and impressive as her title befit and figuratively dripping in jewels from a long marriage to an imperfect man that apologised with gems. Her collection was impressive in all the measurable ways: size, quality and quantity. The enormous square cut diamonds dangling from both ears were affixed by heavy screws to hold their significant weight and each finger was practically inlaid itself with stones and gold. The pride of her collection nestled between her bosoms: an enormous, flawless, diamond of breath-taking clarity, rare hue and unusual cut.

The Duchess evidentially mistook my ogling of her treasure as admiration of her other bountiful charms, and murmured with indulgence at my seeming brazenness, her eyes lighting up with surprise and appreciation. I realised at this time that I had forgotten myself entirely and had reduced the two ladies to nothing but the sum of their jewels, cataloguing them as though I was going to report them as potential spoils back to Raffles. I was horribly embarrassed, and was cut off from my attempt to improve upon my impression when the butler arrived and summoned us to dinner.

I had half-hoped to be sat next to the Duchess so as to attempt to rescue my reputation. This was obviously wishful thinking, as I was far too lowly to sit next to the guest of honour. Instead, I was sat at the other end of the table next to a hoary old gentleman who was doing very well to invade my privacy with every violent gesture of his fork as he told me the story of how he had harassed a poor girl travelling on the train to Whitstable by herself, which he seemed to think was the very definition of high comedy.

  
I am still not a great conversationalist by any stretch of the imagination, but the old man liked me anyway and talked enough for both of us, amusing everyone at the table with his stories of adventuring in the orient where he had made his fortune.  
I found the man amusing, but utterly exhausting. He had an odd vocal quirk of a short barked Hah! before every sentence, as if he was interrupting an internal hilarious joke. He barely looked at me despite talking to me the entire meal, but nevertheless I kept getting the impression that someone was staring at me and developed my own tic of whipping around to catch the one who was looking. Together, the old man and I were a double act of unusual behaviour.

By the time the servants had cleared away the last course I had drunk a very large amount of wine, on top of the champagne, Muscat and port that had been decanted at various fitting stages in the meal and I was feeling incredible. We men retired to the smoking room and it was at this point when I tried to break away from the old Gentleman, but I wasn’t so lucky. He thrust a very fine single malt into my hands and then proceeded to interrogate me as to my sporting loyalties.

“Hah! I pegged you as a cricketing man the moment I clapped eyes on you!” he near-yelled with triumph when I confessed my preference. “Willow or leather, my man? Do you prefer to thwack it or tweak it, hmm? Or are you one who prefers to be out on the boundary, sunning yourself until the ball drops right down your throat?”

I politely ignored his attempt at innuendo and confessed instead that I was unremarkable at all positions, and was far more of a spectator to the sport than anything else.

The Gentleman waved his cigar around so close to my nose that I felt the light hairs on the tip singe. “Well then, my man, what do you stand of England’s chances next summer?

I remarked that as long as Raffles was in the side we would be fine. It was a sincere belief; I had absolute faith in Raffles’ abilities in the two most important Cs in life.

“Hah! Raffles is nothing new!” the old man continued. “Slow bowling is not going to cut it when you need to win matches. I saw a boy from the West Indies bowling at near 90 miles an hour if an inch and the batsman had not a clue how to react. The problem is that everyone knows Raffles. He is talented, yes, but the old hats know his lines and lengths, and those that don’t are learning against fast Johnnies and their reaction times are too good. I’ve heard a rumour there’s a boy in Yorkshire who has an talent for mimicry and the club sent him down to watch Raffles in the nets. Now he’s back they’re training all their batsmen to play against him! I wouldn’t be surprised if Australia had a mole in the MCC now, taking notes on all the key bowlers! Let me tell you, my man, your beloved Raffles is finished! He’ll be out of the side in a year. The era of cricket as a Gentleman’s sport is fast disappearing.”

I sputtered at this. I couldn’t imagine an England without Raffles!

The old gentleman clapped me upon the arm and clucked his tongue sympathetically, slipping me one of his cigars from the case in his jacket. “Don’t be so glum, old boy, there’ll always be an England, even if there isn’t a Raffles! What goes one way always goes another. Have a puff on this, it’ll cheer you up.”

I lit the cigar with great melancholy, but I ended up smoking it at such a rate that it only caused my world to spin in the opposite direction to the way the alcohol had and made no difference to the severity of the rotation, and so I took this as a suitable juncture to make my escape and excused myself to bed.

At this point I hit an impasse. I had only a vague idea where my rooms were, having spent a scant few moments freshening for dinner when I arrived. The corridors of the Bull House were all depressingly alike, and as it was somewhere close to midnight I feared I would rouse the assorted guests sleeping off their heavy meals as I staggered and sloshed my way through them. I fear I was unsuccessful in either finding my room or keeping quiet, and as I made my way back a door a few steps behind me opened, spilling softly diffused lamplight into the hallway, and casting the impressive shadow of the Duchess.

“Come here, my boy,” she said in her heavily accented English. “We did not manage to talk as much as I would have liked at dinner.”

Her rooms were far grander than mine were; in fact, they were finer even than my Mount Street flat, although there was evidence that the furnishings had been dragged together to make a suitable set for such an esteemed guest. A well-stuffed chaise longue sat with its back to the banked fire and was flanked by a fine arm chair (which on later inspection was familiar as it was the fainting couch I had been looking out for as my landmark to my room) in completely different and vaguely clashing floral upholstery. The room was oppressively warm and my collar felt oppressively tight from the combination of it and wine.

I staggered over to the chaise longue, my legs suddenly feeling like jelly and I expected she would take the armchair, but instead she sat close to me on the wide seat of the chair. She was lovely up close, the kind of older lady one would refer to as ‘well preserved’ if one had to choose something other than beautiful. She had removed her jewels by now and looked vulnerable without them as her armour.

“You are quite unlike any of the other English gentlemen I have met so far in this country,” she said. “I did not have high hopes of what to expect when my daughter announced she was marrying an _Englisherman_. Samuel is pleasant enough, but you, you are so, how do I say, exotic, for your kind. I knew the moment you could not tear your eyes from me that you were not like the others.”

I must confess I made an undignified squeak when she leaned closer to me, the fog of her perfume a single-note of freesia and choking up close.

“I saw you searching for me through the night. Come now, we are not restrained by society in here. What was it you wanted to say to me?”

I suppose we all are exotic to someone. I tried to order my thoughts to imagine what one said to a lady being so brazen and obvious with what she wanted. I stammered a few halting near-obscenities in an ashamed tone.

“Do not be a timid rabbit about it!” she barked, and that did it. My mind rose to the occasion and I felt myself think the clearest thought I had since the night began. ‘What would Raffles do, at a time like this? How would he make the most of this situation?’  
Once I started to speak, channelling Raffles, I couldn’t stop. Oh, the things I said to her! I began with recitation of all the tawdry things I had overheard Raffles say to his marks over the year. Raffles is the master of whispering sweet nothings in one ear as he relieves their owner of the jewels hanging from her other and I repeated them with a facsimile of his heated, singular gaze and throaty rasp. The Duchess purred, satisfied that I had begun to talk and appreciative of the content, and I grew bolder at the sound, imagining the things Raffles would say to her personally, how he would seduce her and make her feel like she was the only lady in the world he would ever consider bedding. As that inspiration ran dry my mind skipped to what he would say to me if I had something valuable to catch his interest. How he would set me up with compliments and make subtle cracks in my shell in order to expose my insecurities and set me up for the single blow that would split me apart. Then how he would bend me to his will without ever touching me, with only the promise of the things he would do to me when he got his hands on me and my blood would boil with yearning for him. Then when he finally did reach out with long fingers with the calluses from hours twisting seams and cracking cribs and touched me –

The Duchess murmured my Christian name at this point, and that incongruity of being called so in that low tone where I was so expecting my moniker to be used I gasped, quite taken despite myself, having talked myself nearly to crisis point without even thinking a minute about the consequences. I moved distractedly to kiss her neck, pressing my lips against the cool skin where the remarkable cluster of diamonds had rested that had got me into this frightful mess.

I do not have the great detachment from my emotions that my friend has, or more accurately, I can only pretend that I am as suave and debonair as he for a short amount of time. I was never a very talented impressionist. I was left alone in the Dowager Duchess’ rooms whilst her ladyship bustled in her boudoir, having extricated from my embrace and excused herself with the knowing pause of a hungry lion eyeing an overly bold gazelle.  
I rubbed my face in my hands, feeling the anxiety and panic rising in my chest as my very nature began to reawaken in me as the fog of alcohol receded. My gentleman’s resolve, so dedicatedly beaten into me by school and society, followed quickly on the heels of the anxiety and overtook the edges of my caddish, Raffles-ish mask. I was aghast, once I started to think about it. She was a widow, an older woman, and I was a common thief in the clothes and skin of a Gentleman, and Raffles was my man.

I was half mad, in full paroxysms of terror as I made a still-wobbly dash for it, my mind focused on just getting to Esher station and back to the safe cocoon of London. My eyes focused instead on the visible glint of her jewels upon her table as I passed the door. My magpie senses had a residual pull of want towards them. I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking, perhaps I felt like a guilty spouse attempting to make amends for cheating with a glitzy bauble, but I grabbed something whilst she was in her third room and effected my silent escape on sueded heel.

I managed to make it out of the front door before a strong grip seized my left wrist. Whipping my head round, I came face to face with the gentleman from dinner that had so monopolised my time. His grip caused the bones in my wrist to grind painfully against each other and I dropped my guilty cargo with a whimper. The man was furious and unblinking and I was sure he was going to rouse the house with an almighty bellow of THIEF! THIEF! Instead he stepped back, still holding my wrist too tight to break free and sighed deeply, the tension and age that had been creasing up his face smoothing out like it had been touched by an iron.

“I’m sure you’re feeling very pleased with yourself,” Raffles said, in his normal tone.

I should have known. I cursed myself for not seeing it immediately. I knew his disguises by that point and could spot the usual ones in a crowd or at a hundred paces but he still can catch me off guard with a new one. Of all the times to fall for them and so hard, and I had fallen for it like a guppy! I sputtered, still taken aback. Raffles looked angry still. “Taking advantage of a widow like that. I never really pegged you for a gold digger, Bunny, I rather thought you nobler than that, but I hope that it’s made you happy.”

I am well deserving of my nickname. I went as stock-still as a rabbit and gaped at him, shocked still that he had appeared out of nowhere, that he had followed me to this party, that he sounded so genuinely disappointed in my uncharacteristic behaviour.

Raffles moved to push past me when his foot caught on something on the floor. Against the dark stone of the front step the setting the jewel was in appeared even more exquisite. He gave me an odd look and bent down, wrapping his hand around the fine chain and cradling the pendant between his fingers.

“What is this, Bunny?” His calm tone chilled me more than the midnight air could and I began to babble, unable to stop myself.

“Raffles, you have it all backward! After last week I couldn’t bear to let your gift go unreciprocated.” I paused, swallowed, and decided to confess all, instead of trying one of my inept manipulations. “Actually, that’s a lie, Raffles. I was so angry. I have been angry for weeks since you gave me that pen. I am not going to leave you; you don’t have to doubt me. I am your man; I don’t need an escape route from you, or your blessing to leave you. I don’t know what I did to make you think I wanted out, but I am in this for as long as you’ll have me. That’s one of the baubles the Dowager Duchess of Upper Saxony was wearing tonight. It was on her vanity and in a fit of madness I took it whilst she was in…in her boudoir. I couldn’t go through with bedding her, Raffles, I didn’t have the pluck. She thought I was interested in her but I only could see her diamonds. You have broken me; I cannot see other people normally anymore. I am ruined to everyone’s charms but yours. I was only thinking of you when I grabbed the diamond.”

I was stock-still and shivering with the mix of fear and relief of confessing all, and dimly remembering where I left my coat in the house. Raffles ground out a frustrated noise I had never heard from him before.

“Do you mean to tell me that you came to this party, used your real name, and openly and blatantly went to bed with a German aristocrat only to have a change of heart at the last minute and instead decided it would be better to rob her of her signature diamond? Out of some kind of loyalty to me? If anything, Bunny, you are an even more brainless rabbit than I had ever thought possible.” At this point, he sighed deeply. “I cannot however, doubt the intentions of your subconscious. Look at the pendant, Bunny. What is your inner mind trying to tell me?”

I looked properly at the necklace I had seized in my fit. It was obviously an excellent example of North Italian workmanship. The duchess was proud of it, a gift from her sorely missed late husband, on the occasion of their first year of marriage by the tiny inscription on the back. There were diamonds, clusters of them around the central stone, all set in lustrous white gold. It was breath taking and worth a small fortune, but Raffles was not drawing my attention to the craftsmanship nor the expense. He meant that of all the stones in the boudoir I could have grasped the one I chose was a flawless, perfect cut pink heart.

Raffles was close now, pressing the hand holding the necklace to my face. His fingers were not like anything I had imagined and instead were smooth, like he had never done a jot of work in his life. Raffles was always well disguised, lying even in his skin. The diamond was cool and sharp and the sensation forced my eyes up to meet his.

“My dear rabbit”, Raffles crooned, delighted. “I do believe you are trying to give me your heart”. With that, he kissed me, and I felt myself flush the colour of the diamond.

The kiss lasted a perfect moment, but nowhere near long enough for all the yearning that was behind it.  
“I appreciate the gesture, Bunny, but we will have to put it back. You have risked a lot and you have done so foolishly, but you did not take the necessary precautions that would allow me to add this to your trousseau. I will take care of it, my man, I think you have been through enough for tonight and I don’t want you waking up the whole house.”

He was gone near half an hour. To this day I don’t know how he managed to put the pendant back, but when he returned he looked pleased with himself and took my arm in his as we made our way back home. I was in a heightened state of awareness, feeling every touch and brush of his body against mine both accidental and obscene. When we were safely on the train he kissed me again, and did so all the way into Waterloo.

I woke up early the next afternoon in the too-warm linens with a head full of death, the aftermath of various wines dancing behind my eyes intermingling with the memory of Raffles and I losing ourselves in each other as the sun rose over London. I cracked my eyes open, but instead of Raffles’ sleep-tousled head beside me, the pillow held only a ring. A ring worth at least one German portrait, maybe more, the kind of ring that had yet to be resized to fit the finger of its previous owner. The kind of ring that could go missing with no suspicion of foul play, because its owner could not bear to be parted from it long enough to take it to the jewellers.

I did not expect it to fit me. That was not the point. It was a grand gesture, and a deeply appreciated one. I curled my hand round it, smiling contentedly to myself as I burrowed under the blankets and went back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! Endless eternal love and thanks to Beth for betaing and Kafers for squee.


End file.
